RFC-4: Request a demo feature [Resolved]

As a smaller partner that mainly sells to larger orgs, we’re used to running high touch 1:1 demos.

People usually find our demo link on our listing or our website, that lets them pick a time on my calendar.

I’d be interested in trying this feature to see if it helps us convert more prospects.

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@boris -In this response, I was referring to upcoming iterations of the concepts. We are evaluating all the feedback and will share an update on this thread on what we could accommodate and what we couldn’t (with the rationale).

Please allow us some time to get back with the updated concepts.

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@Paul - Yes, we understand this will be a huge operational overhead to partners. This will be an opt-in feature. Partners can opt-in to provide Demos (live or pre-recorded/webinars) to users.

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Hi @MalathiVangalapati ,

I’d like to point out, that opt-in in the context of the marketplace is not really opt-in from our perspective. Let me elaborate on that.

As I stated earlier, we use links to Calendly to allow customers to schedule demos with us directly. That works really well, but in the end, it is just a link in our app’s description and we would love for it to be more prominent.
The moment a new “Request a Demo” button becomes available for some apps, things will change for us. Customer will quickly “learn” that demos are available, if that button is present, especially if it is prominent like this:

Bildschirmfoto 2023-02-21 um 09.00.28

What this means for us, is that we can expect less demos to be scheduled via the Calendly link as it is much less prominent. Customer will look for the official demo button and simply assume that demos are not available.

Frankly speaking, if at least one other partner starts using this feature as described, we will feel the need to do the same to keep up. Even it means introducing friction; scheduling is already solved for and we would regress on that.

Now, what I (and others in this thread, I presume) would like, is a “Request a Demo” button that we can set the link for. To Calendly, to Atlassian’s schedule-a-demo tool or yet something else. It should also be in Atlassian’s interest, as you’d be able to gather data on how many of our shared customers are interested in demos and how many of your marketplace partners use which tooling for scheduling demos.

Happy to chat and elaborate further on this, if you like.

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  1. We already have a request a demo link in our listings, so improving the visibility of this option would be a positive for me. We’ve regularly noticed with customers who book demos that they are not the technical contact, so it’s a great way to collect feedback from the people who will actually be using the app.

  2. We definitely would want the possibility to send customer to a Calendly/Hubspot link so they can directly choose a slot. We already have integrations set up to save their information in our CRM from Calendly, so that avoids having to copy information between tools. Potentially we would need to be able to differentiate between the hostings, for example activating the option for just the Cloud version, or activating it for DC & Cloud, but putting different Calendly links as different Product Managers would be providing the demos.

  3. We already have links for 1:1 demos and are not overloaded with requests, so yes, we’re capable of meeting the requirements. If this were to become the case, we would probably just reduce the number of slots available with our scheduling solution (Calendly/Hubspot).

This seems a simple way to promote the option and free up some precious characters in the More info section, so once we can add a custom link I think we’ll be happy to try it out.

Question that I don’t think has been addressed: will this option be visible both on the UPM and the Marketplace?

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Hi again @MalathiVangalapati and thanks for bringing this up! Plenty of feedback has been shared already (seems I’m late to the party) so I’m going to focus on the few seemingly uncovered areas.

Generally having a “central” way to offer demos to customers would be amazing! We currently have this in nearly all of our listings for several years now (plain hyperlink in the Details) and we see great success! What I’d really like to be able to do in the future is the following:

1) Ability to use partners existing tooling
We have a calendly-like solution that makes booking available for the whole team (not a single person) - we’d like to keep that in order to cover different time zones.
2) Minimize friction
a) Please do not require a Marketplace Account to be able to request a demo. This will artificially limit the audience a lot with out the need for it.
b) The number of required fields in the form/overlay is to big in our experience. Initially we had a longer form as well but found as soon as we kept it minimal (email, App, optional notes) adoption grew a lot. Most of the information covered in the mockup above we ask further down the line (we’re creating Jira issues for each request to be able to track things)

I also fully back @BenRomberg’s remark about offering pre-recorded “pseudo-demos” instead.

Again, thanks for investing in our mutual success here!

Cheers, David

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I would like to add another aspect to this, since creating RFCs is limited to Atlassians.
IMHO a much better (although different) MP listing button would be Try out in Sandbox or Install as sandbox (you don’t need to be an admin).
I feel the ‘request a demo’ feature fails to address the customers real need to try out what they want to accomplish. They’ve already found your app, read the hightlights, watched the video and thought: “Cool I’m going to try if the app can solve my problem.”
A ‘demo’ is still a demonstration of what the vendor believes is relevant. I am yet to see a customer submit their detailed requirements into a demo request for the vendor to tailor the demo.
I believe ‘Try out/Install in sandbox’ is in line with @ibuchanan 's reference to “Lesson 3: Treat human interaction as a bug”. It enables customers at user level to demo to decision makers that the app solves a problem and is worth the investment.

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:wave: Hey folks! Please help us keep this RFC on topic by commenting on the contents of Request a demo feature instead of raising other (potentially valid) problems and solutions. Thanks!

Not sure which comments you’re referring to - all of the comments so far has been in response to the proposed impact of this RFC

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First of all, thanks for looking at ways to bring us closer to our customers. This is very important for Product Managers like me.

In particular for the “Request a demo feature”, I wonder how this will impact small teams that do not have the resources to deal with all demo requests that land on their inbox. The fact that is either opt-in or opt-out, would mean that you either handle all demos or non at all. It would be useful to have some alternatives. For example, the option to accept a max. number of demo requests per month, or the option to limit the time slots available.

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Just mirroring what the comments here are mentioning. A CTA button for a resource center/‘about app’ space or an on-demand webinar sign up could be helpful to convert prospects but I don’t think it solves the problem of bridging the gap between customers and partners.

When considering the buying funnel for a prospect, I would assume that the marketplace page is one of the last touch points along a buyer journey. At this point they may have done most of their research on a product and are there because they are ready to convert. This is a good argument for 1:1 demo button as the person may have very specific use case questions at that point. Therefore I see the logic - again from a prospect conversion POV.

I also wanted to ask, does Atlassian have any evidence to suggest that an enterprise size prospect would click this 1:1 demo button? For us, a large proportion of our enterprise sales come through partner organisations who conduct demo’s of our products and assist enterprise clients through the selection process. This leads me to think that enterprise size clients might not want/need this 1:1 demo option.

Thanks for sharing the idea. Will keep an eye on how things develop.

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We struggle with engagement at the evaluation stage, so the Request-a-demo feature would be very welcome.

The only real concern is the number of demo’s that are requested and whether we are able to scale in time to match demand, appreciate that this could have a daily limit but perhaps other limits/options could be included such as by number of licences or in future app editions?

Free app’s or customers with a lower number or licence could be offered/directed to sign up to a one to many training session?

This feels a little over engineered TBH.

A consistent UI to request a demo for those that want to opt-in sounds good, but it should just link out to their own solution for qualifying and controlling demo requests.

We’re a little overdue but today I’m closing this thread as the discussion phase has expired. With 984 views as of today, we nearly broke 1000! There were 119 likes and 21 commenters contributing 34 comments.

We appreciate all of your input on how the Marketplace can better facilitate demos. We learned a lot from your comments and about the RFC process itself. For anyone with thoughts about this example in context of the overall RFC process, RFC-1 about RFCs is still open for another week (and we’ll be open to input on RFCs at any point).

I’ve had a quick conversation with @MalathiVangalapati who is preparing a resolution to this topic. I know that she has learned a lot from your comments. Please stay tuned for resolution or before 9 March 2023.

Thank you for the comments and ideas around this problem and proposed solution!

What did we learn?

  • Some partners, especially those which primarily target larger organizations, do want the option to enable requests for a demo directly through their marketplace listing.
  • Though many partners identified serious flaws in this solution. In particular, we heard concerns that:
    • This solution, as proposed, could quickly overwhelm teams with too many or unqualified leads, which would be a poor experience for vendors and customers alike (denied demo requests)
    • The majority of vendors would seem to prefer additional or alternative forms of educating and qualifying leads. Such as:
      • Resources for live and recorded webinars
      • Resources for additional documentation
      • Integrations with familiar lead capture and scheduling tools
      • Desire for sandbox-type trial environments

What did we change?

Given the serious flaws, we will not be moving forward with this project as proposed in this RFC and will be reviewing the direction and scope of this project.

What is coming next?

If we choose to continue this work, it will be shared as a new RFC that addresses the above serious flaws.

Thanks again for all of your comments to help improve this solution!

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